Book Reviewof Slouching Towards Gomorrah:
Modern Liberalism and American Declineby Robert H. Bork

Attorney Robert H. Bork became notable for having been refused confirmation by the U.S. Senate, of his 1987 nomination for the Supreme Court. He had been Solicitor General (the federal government's lawyer), and a Court of Appeals judge.

His book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, purports to tell about America's decline, and reasons.

Bork is not a practicing, professional historian, nor a trained ethicist. He overlooks the significant data already long ago written, professionally covering the matter.

So his book fails to cover subject matter of significance. This site reveals such data, and provides links to background missed by Bork. We'll start with subject matter, then go to activism, that genuinely tried a century ago, to head off the problems he misblames on "modern liberals."

In reality, he and his faction are causing a number of the problems he, and they, allege, profess, and purport to oppose. Simulataneously they use 'fear factor' and 'moral' arguments to denounce what they are causing! They use such arguments to scam potential voters.

“As early as 1902 Ballantyne had found an increase in the abortion rate in French and Austrian women working in tobacco factories.”—Beulah R. Bewley, “Smoking in Pregnancy,” 288 Brit Med J (#6415) 424-426 (11 Feb 1984).

About "fifty-three per cent. of . . . abortions . . . are due to tobacco. . . . inhalation of tobacco smoke by pregnant mothers when sitting among smokers is sufficient to cause fatal poisoning of the fœtus."—Herbert H. Tidswell, M.D., The Tobacco Habit: Its History and Pathology (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1912), p 238. Thus tobacco has a record of significantly leading to abortion, p 184, terminating about 1/7 of live-births, p 177.

"The smoking mother is . . . 80 percent more likely than the nonsmoker to have a spontaneous abortion."—Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., The Politics of Cancer (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1978), p 162.

"Smoking is also said to induce an inclination to strong drinks. The ill effects of the tobacco seem to be momentarily counteracted by the alcohol, and the stimulating effects of the intoxicating liquors are moderated by the tobacco. Thus it happens that drinkers are always smokers, and thus it is also that smoking often leads to drinking."—Dr. John Hinds, The Use of Tobacco (Nashville, Tenn: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1882), pp 125-126.

Bork mentions nothing of the tobacco-crime connection, which the detailed site shows, dates from pre-1836.

D. Divorce.

Bork misses the tobacco connection.

He misses the data leading to the finding that "smoking is a predictor of divorce."—Bachman, et al., Smoking, Drinking, and Drug Use in Young Adulthood (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc, Pub, 1997), p 70.

"When we take a thorough drug history, we [find] that nicotine—not alcohol or cannabis—is the drug of entry for most young people."—Emanuel Peluso and Lucy Silvay Peluso, "The Challenge of Treating Teenagers," 9 Alcoholism & Addiction (#2) 21 (December 1988).

Cigarettes cause "the worst of all drug habits, the smoking of tobacco."—Herbert H. Tidswell, M.D., The Tobacco Habit: Its History and Pathology (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1912), p 69.

"The first step toward addiction may be as innocent as a boy's puff on a cigarette in an alleyway," said the U.S. Supreme Court in Robinson v California, 370 US 660, 670; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (25 June 1962).

This was repeating a fact already long known. The government already long knew that "all" drug addicts are smokers.—Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger and U.S. Attorney William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953), p 196.

For example, "there would be no marijuana addicts . . . if people did not first learn to smoke cigarettes."—Frank L. Wood, M.D., What You Should Know About Tobacco (Wichita, KS: The Wichita Publishing Co, 1944), p 143. Also, "all of those who became alcohol addicts, in the experience of this writer [Wood], were first tobacco addicts."

"Tobacco . . . holds a special status as a ‘gateway' substance in the development of other drug dependencies not only because tobacco use reliably precedes use of illicit drugs, but also because use of tobacco is more likely to escalate to dependent patterns of use of most other dependence producing drugs."—Jack E. Henningfield, Richard Clayton, and William Pollin, "Involvement of Tobacco in Alcoholism and Illicit Drug Use," 85 British J of Addiction 279-292, especially p 283 (1990).

"In my work at the Detention Hospital, I find that licentiousness resulting in venereal disease and alcoholism, is the principal cause of mental derangement. And one of the most pernicious incentives to improper indulgences is the excessive use of tobacco. Any agent which weakens the heart and so excites the brain as to make it impossible to concentrate the mind on one subject, as tobacco does in many cases, followed by failing memory, incontinuity of thought, nervous excitement with physical and sexual debility, and muscular tremors, is dangerous beyond all estimate, particularly for young people."—Prof. Bruce Fink, Tobacco, p 25 (1915).

Similar data has been oft cited, for example,

in Dr. William A. Alcott's 1836 book, The Use of Tobacco, p 58, citing the tobacco-immorality connection as "obvious"

"The decadence of Spain began when the Spaniards adopted cigarettes, and if this pernicious practice obtains among adult Americans the ruin of the Republic is close at hand."—The New York Times (1884).

"Robert R. Kuczynski, the world-known authority on migration statistics, estimated that a minimum of 15 million slaves landed alive. Because of the brutal treatment on transport and the conditions of crossing, the total number of people of which the African continent was depleted amounted . . . to several times more. Carter G. Woodson, in 'Negro in Our History,' estimated the total at 50 million, while W. E. DuBois, in 'The Negro,' gives the figure of 60 million."—Peter M. Bergman, The Chronological History of the Negro in America [New York: Harper & Row, 1969], p 2. [Legal term: Universal Malice.]

Once it became acceptable to mass kill slaves, and then to mass kill adults via poison, eventually killings of the unborn became acceptable.

Bork and his faction not only do not oppose tobacco-caused deaths, but often actively support them. Examples of same by various members of that allegedly 'christian, pro-life' faction include incidents such as

Bork misses the prevention activism of the 19th century and early 20th century, trying to head off these tobacco-linked matters. Our ancestors knew much of the tobacco connection to 'morals' issues, and tried to prevent them.

Such activists did not misdiagnose, as Bork does; they saw the tobacco connection. They did not blame 1980's 'liberals,' there weren't any a century ago!

Bork fails to cite the preventive laws. For example, he fails to mention the Michigan law MCL § 750.27, MSA § 28.216 (1909) which forbids "any person within the state" from action that "manufactures, sells or gives to anyone, any cigarette containing any ingredient deleterious to health or foreign to tobacco . . . ." (Details at our Michigan Law Information site).

He fails to cite the pertinent criminal prosecution precedents, precedents which his faction when in power (e.g., the Reagan-Bush administrations), never enforce. They not only refuse to enforce the criminal laws; they denounce, oppose, undermine, sabotage, obstruct, civil law actions.

III. Why Robert Bork Misses So Much

Next, we cover why Robert Bork misses so much.

Why does Bork miss the tobacco connection to so many subjects?

Answer. Bork is himself a smoker. He is an addict, a nicotine addict, i.e., a drug addict.

Tobacco-drug addicts are notoriously unreliable in assessing relations and correlations among facts. Doctors have pointed this out for decades.

2. "Smokers show the same attitude to tobacco as addicts to their drug, and their judgment is therefore biased in giving an opinion of its effect on them."—Lennox Johnston, "Tobacco Smoking and Nicotine," 243 The Lancet 742 (19 Dec 1942).

Smokers typically do not perceive the tobacco connection to lung disease! So how can they perceive it to any other subject? much less those cited by the centuries of medical and historical data alluded to above!

Though unable to perceive tobacco connections to facts, such addicts (and their RTL accessories), however, commonly imagine themselves far superior in knowledge and morals, to others who actually do have and identify the facts! Such addicts oft "parade the narcosis" of their delusions of grand expertise!

Bork, an addict, misses all this. This is no criticism of him in particular; he has typical tobacco-addict symptoms.

And that faction (purporting to be pro-life!!) is disproportionately anti-employee, anti-worker safety, anti-pure water, anti-pure air, pro-death, anti-life. They in essence fake [even if (for the aforesaid mental reasons), unknowingly] being pro-life. They mouth pro-life rhetoric, while they in reality massively sabotage the cause they profess.

The professions are purely for public consumption? No, not really; tobacco addicts are generally truly confused and unaware (anosognosia).
For more on motivation, see long-term Republican activist turned exposé-writer, Tanya Melich, The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report from Behind the Lines (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), showing the racist and anti-women policy to be deliberate.
See also Zack Exley, "Will the Real Pro-life Party Please Stand Up?" (15 August 2008).
Texas Senator Wendy Davis gave a definition of "pro-life" as follows: “I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.” Result: "Conservatives are throwing a fit about her definition," says "Wendy Davis Redefines ‘Pro-Life,’ Enrages Anti-Choicers" (6 November 2013).
Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana, Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., "‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party" (British Medical Journal's "Tobacco Control," 8 February 2013) (Excerpt.)
Pam Martens, "IRS Sleuths Were on the Right Track: Big Tobacco Created Tea Party in 1994" (22 May 2013): "Big Tobacco not only created the Tea Party, it has promoted it over decades, pumped millions into marketing it, and pulled it out of its magic hat every time it needed to produce an overnight, spontaneous “grassroots” movement." [Details]. Thus IRS agents were on the right track, asking the real purpose of the conservative groups claiming 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(4) tax exempt status, as by federal law, "501(c)(4) organizations are civic leagues or associations operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare or local associations of employees with limited membership." Groups supporting the tobacco holocaust, Jack Kevorkian style, working to enable millions to be poisoned to death, are the extreme opposite of "promotion of social welfare"! And see non-scandal background; and Heather Cox Richardson, "GOP’s Shutdown Debacle Resembles Our First … in 1879!" (30 September 2013) ("A conservative minority [of Confederates, tobacco planters] refused to fund the government unless the president [Hayes] gave them their agenda. . . . the very same men who had made war against the government on the [Civil War] battlefield were making war against it from their congressional seats.")
See also Dr. Stanton Glantz, "Big Tobacco's Rightwing Pals and Fundees Aggressively Supporting ecigs" (25 January 2014), giving these examples: Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, CATO Institute, and National Center for Public Policy Research.

Bork in 1987, was already cited as misstating facts, to come up with some preconceived result he wanted. The height of unethical [or the aforesaid mental condition], he'd even do that in court cases before him!
“'He is ruthlessly result-oriented,' complains one attorney, who accuses Bork of deciding the outcome of cases in advance even if it requires misstating arguments presented to him.”—Ted Gest, “A New Majority Moves to the Right,” 103 US News & World Report (#2) pp 28-29 (13 July 1987).
Of course, a propensity to doing this (lying) in even ONE case, serves as an absolute bar, disqualification, to being a judge on any court, much less the Supreme Court. America has had enough of that type of judge, see case list of anti-factual Supreme Court decisions, at our Tiffany site.
“It should . . . . make you more suspicious of all legal and judicial institutions. Trust no one in power, including — especially — judges. Don't take judicial opinions at face value. Go back and check the transcript [record]. Cite-check the cases. You will be amazed how often you will find judges 'finessing' the facts and the law. Too often, legal observers take as a given judges' intellectual honesty.”—Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz, Letters to a Young Lawyer (Basic Books, 2001), p 11.
See also “A Lawyer's View of the Justice System,” by Joseph H. Delaney, in Analog Sci Fiction and Fact, Vol. CXVIX No. 7 & 8 (July/August 1999).
A “reputation . . . for truth and veracity . . . so notoriously bad that [a lawyer is] not to be believed under oath [surely, in decisions]” is to be disbarred, not be a lawyer anymore, says the Michigan Supreme Court, In the Matter of Mills, 1 Mich 392, 398 (1850).
That would include disbarment of judges “misstating arguments” in his cases.

IV. What You Can Do about Bork Faction Disinformation

Lastly, we cover what you can do about Bork faction disinformation. That faction claims to be "pro-life," anti-drug, anti-alcoholism, anti-crime, pro-'law and order,' etc., yet typically supports candidates promoting tobacco, the starter drug, and the No. One cause of premature death. How do they get away with it?

4. Read the background on the Iowa Cigarette Law of 1897. Note especially the emphasis on adults setting the right example for youth. Contrast that era's attitude, with the Bork faction limp approach ('do as I say, not as I do') to children on tobacco, knowing such approach won't have real success! Yet that faction purports to be the one pro-life! The most pro-tobacco-death-types, i.e., the most extreme anti-lifers, pretend to be the most 'pro-life'!!

5. Note opportunities to pass on truthful information to rebut Bork faction disinformation. Examples include 'letters-to-editor,' 'meet-the-candidates' sessions, and the like public forums.

6. Support education on the above subjects in your local schools. Urge your Board of Education to adopt requirements for education in these areas, upgrade to 19th century level education. Informed students, will be less likely to smoke, less likely to be deceived as adults, by Bork faction disinformation.

7. Note that a genuine 'pro-life' approach is not limited to abortion and assisted suicide issues. Instead, real 'pro-life' means good jobs, safe environment, job safety, pure air, pure water, fair non-discriminatory treatment, equal justice, good education, structural reforms, etc., etc. Such factors make for happier people, better educated people, individuals less likely to smoke, less likely to be deceived by pro-tobacco disinformation, and opposition to the above fairness goals, by Bork faction disinformation. Remember, the Bork faction is helping cause the very evils they profess to oppose.

between the Religious Right and the Political Right) ("The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle.")

Amanda Marcotte, "How Christian Delusions Are Driving the GOP Insane" (9 October 2013) ("The willingness of Republicans to take the debt ceiling and the federal budget hostage in order to try to extract concessions from Democrats is probably the most lasting gift that the Tea Party has granted the country. More reasonable Republican politicians fear being primaried by Tea Party candidates. A handful of wide-eyed fanatics in Congress have hijacked the party. The Tea Party base and the hard right politicians driving this entire thing seem oblivious to the consequences. It’s no wonder, since so many of them---particularly those in leadership---are fundamentalist Christians whose religions have distorted their worldview until they cannot actually see what they’re doing and what kind of damage it would cause.")

Elizabeth Stoker and Matt Bruenig, "The Religious Right Is a Fraud" (15 October 2013)
("The notable exclusion of poverty from the Christian agenda would doubtlessly puzzle European Christians, whose support of Christian ethical approaches to family life have always been paired with a deep and vigorous concern for the poor. And, unlike their American counterparts, European Christians haven’t been willing to leave poverty up to individual charity or the market to handle.")

13. Watch background material such as the documentary video "Jesus Camp," showing Pastor Becky Fisher helping run "Kids on Fire," a summer camp in Devils Lake, N.D., that grooms children to be soldiers in "God's army."

14. Recognize that the "Bible-Belt" "Conservative Right" have a long record of manipulating "poor white trash" to support their "moral" causes. It used to be slavery, having blacks to look down on. Over the years, the targets have been Indians, foreigners, women, Irish, etc. Modern targets include abortionists, gays, lawyers, Islamics . . . . Recognize that the manipulation process is the same; only the names change!

15. Recognize that you will opposed by professed pro-lifers, the Bork faction. Write rebuttals to their scams, exposing them as typically supporting tobacco candidates, pro-death candidates, causing some of the very evils they profess to oppose.

16. Ask professed-RTL-ers to follow the example of Apostle Paul. He repented when shown his error. Ask them to do likewise. Note reaction!! most unbiblical!!

17. Keep in mind that Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf was "pro-life." "Pro-life" doesn't mean a person is not a genocidal maniac! mass-slaughtering on any and all other subjects!

18. Historically, “the Conservative Party was . . the stupidest party. . . . I did not . . . say that . . . Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” (Public and Parliamentary Speeches, 31 May 1866, pp. 85-86.) “Stupidity is much the same the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so those whose opinions and feelings are emanations from their own nature and faculties.” (Subjection of Women, Chapter I, p. 273)—JohnStuartMill (1806-1873).

22. See also references on historic data by, e.g., Lawrence Lader (1919-2006), Abortion (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966); Margaret Sanger and the Fight for Birth Control (New York: Doubleday & Co, 1955); RU 486: The Pill That Could End the Abortion Wars and Why American Women Don't Have It ( New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co, Inc, 1991).

23. "The medical definition of death is irreversible cessation of brain activity. No brain, no mind, thus no person. That also works as the standard for the beginning of personhood. No brain, no mind, no person: a blastocyst isn't a person, it's a blob. Religious righties who disagree with that are welcome to have their brains removed and then tell us about it." -- From a comment at
"Life Does Not Begin at Conception and I Can Prove It" (28 June 2014).

Note other morality-professing types, also smokers, tobacco addicts, e.g., William Bennett, Jesse Helms, Henry Hyde, Trent Lott, with their assertions having the same flaws as shown above.
Note that professed pro-life or "religious right" types
(the term is "Pro-Life in Name Only," PLINO) such as Pat Robertson, JerryFalwell, John Hagee, RalphReed, Kenneth Starr, Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan, William Bennett, George Bush I and II, Rush Limbaugh, Jesse Helms, John Ashcroft, Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Randall Terry, etc., take misleading views and positions of the type herein exposed. They don't expose the tobacco connections above-cited; yet they profess to be 'pro-life'! Aiding and abetting the mass obstruction and deaths as above shown, is that really pro-life?
Ask yourself, are they faking concern? Addiction explains smokers' disinformation. But these other people, don't they know better? They profess to teach!

"Conservatives had long maintained that the poor produced too many babies. More abortions would mean less children on welfare. But conservatives also cast about [1 Peter 5:8 style] for noneconomic issues that cut across class lines such as school prayers, homophobia, sexism, pornography in the arts, racism, affirmative action, family values, and fear of crime issues that might win support from modest-income voters who would otherwise have no common cause with the Right. When they discovered that working-class Roman Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant votes could be gleaned on the abortion issue, rightistpoliticians soon became supporters of compulsory pregnancy, in what was one of the most dramatic flip-flops of modern American politics," says Parenti, Myths, supra, p 43.
In the 1980 presidential campaign, "[e]verywhere [George H. W.] Bush went . . . he was followed by prolife demonstrators. [Bush asked] 'How am I going to get rid of these people?' [Answer] 'Change your position.' . . . He wanted to be president, and that is what the party activists required of him," says Robert D. Novak, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (New York: Crown Forum, 2007), Chapter 28, p 341, citing his Completing the Revolution (1999).
Republican Presidential Candidate (2012) Willard ("Mitt") Romney has a long record of holding typical conservative pro-abortion views. See "Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show" (Monday, 2 July 2012). He "had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics." Romney's pro-abortion activism paid off handsomely, reaping "tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners." Romney, age 65, continues to hold his formative years standard 1960's-1970's conservative Republican pro-abortion viewpoint, thus proclaims that he will not, if elected President, take any anti-abortion measures, 10 October 2012).
Rev. S. R. Shearer reveals the actual pro-death beliefs of such people, in "How the GOP and its ally, the Religious Right, have created a Death Cult" (10 February 2012) ("Contemporary conservatism is bent on destroying the social safety net (basic programs such as Social Security and unemployment insurance). . . . As recent data suggests, poverty leads to death and a diminished lifespan. When the ... Republicans stand against food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and other programs for those displaced by the Great Recession, through actions both direct and indirect, they are in fact killing people.")
"Louisiana Will Stop Providing End of Life Care to Low-Income Americans" (20 January 2013) (Conservative Gov. Bobby Jindahl's policies mean that "low-income Louisianans with terminal illnesses, debilitating disabilities, and chronic long-term medical problems will no longer have access to the essential home and medical care that they need").
"My Family, Our Cancer, and the Murderous Cruelty of Conservatives" (Kurt Eichenwald, 15 July 2013) (Conservatives are shutting down health care facilities for the poor, with the result to kill them. One anti-abortion bill sponsor, Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, "the legislator who, famously in Texas, opposed state funding of prenatal care—essential for the health of babies—because fetuses “aren’t born yet.”
Anti-aborts clearly have no regard for fetuses at all. They simply pretend concern, solely in anti-abort context, to scam their sheeple retard voters, conservatives who don't have the mental capacity to comprehend the anti-aborts hypocrisy and real agenda, aiding and abetting Big Business.)
Terrance Heath, Republican Death Panels (Tuesday, 31 July 2012) ("They are the six Republican governors who have vowed to refuse the Medicaid expansion that will happen most other states, under the Affordable Care Act — Rick Scott (FL), Rick Perry (TX), Phil Bryant (MS), Nikki Haley (SC), Terry Branstad (IA), and Bobby Jindal (LA). These Republican governors are opening the "trap door" that the Supreme Court installed in the Affordable Care Act, even at it upheld most of the law. But it's the poorest residents in these states, many of whom are African American and Latino, and who would have gained health coverage and access to care, that will fall through that trap door.")
Just as they long have, the modern "Religious Right" calling themselves Republicans, still want minorities to die, whether by abortion or by denying health care.
The belief system supporting increasing death rate among the non-elite derives from the elite's education system, see background by Prof. Adam Howard, "Unlearning the Lessons of Privilege," Teaching Social Responsibility, Vol. 66(#8), May 2009) (has example of contempt of the affluent capitalist class for non-members of same). (See also Prof. Howard's Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling (London: Routledge, 2007) ("Explores what educators, students and families at elite schools value most in education and how these values guide ways of knowing and doing that both create high standards for their educational programs and reinforce privilege as a collective identity. This book illustrates the ways that affluent students construct their own privilege.")
Republican National Committee women employees' health insurance covers abortions, says Jennifer Nedeau in the article "Low Income Women Can't Get Abortions, But RNC Staffers Can" (12 November 2009). The "staffers of the Republican National Committee have had abortion covered under their insurance plan since at least 1991."
"Hobby Lobby Hypocrisy; The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers" (1 April 2014) "more than $73 million"! "The company's owners argued [that the Health Care Reform Law] forced them to violate their religious beliefs [against contraception]. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit." The Supreme Court's "right to life" conservatives voted 5-4 to ignore the hypocrisy!
See also John LeBoutillier, "McCain's Character" (11 July 2006).
“When you head South, you're talking about two things—tobacco farmers and evangelicals,” said Ralph Reed (2000).
This "Religious Right" / "Bible Belt" / tobacco role has been true for centuries!
Under Democrats, abortion rates go down. "After reaching 25 percent from a high of over 1.6 million in 1990 [George Bush I immediately after Ronald Reagan], the number of abortions performed annually in the U.S. has leveled off [2012] at about 1.2 million a year," says U.S. Abortion Statistics By Year (1973-Current) (National Right to Life Factsheet, January 2012). This is a 400,000 decline once Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama took office.
For background on, e.g.,

Prof. Michael Parenti, Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993) (cites "religious leaders" who "evade social issues such as poverty, oppression and militarism [the beam], and [instead solely] on personal pieties, sectarian intolerance, and a prudish moralism. . . . Sin and virture are defined as private matters unrelated to economic issues. Thus a worker who filches something from the business firm is guilty of theft, but the firm owners who grow rich off the underpaid labor of workers [ James 5:1-5] are not considered thieves. Government policy that tolerates 'pornography' in art and literaturee is sinful, while government policy that pursuses wars of aggression and favors the rich over the poor is not. Virture is [solely] a matter of loving and obeying God, rather than [the Bible Society Management Laws] advancing the collective human condition," p 44. Cites Ross's Sin and Society, supra. For more, click here.)

Chris Floyd, “Goobers on Parade: Fake Christians and Sham Southerners” (5 June 2006) (cites the fact that these people with a “fake Christianity and fake patriotism have been pulled out from under their muddy rocks and loosed upon the nation by cynical manipulators in the power elite, who have used them as blunt instruments to advance their own predatory agenda.”) [“Power elite” agenda includes supporting tobacco, and obstructing safety rules, adequate minimum wage, decent health care, etc.]

The Religious Right / Bible Belt scam is carefully designed for distraction purposes. “. . . you don't have to be pious with us. Ma and I are a couple of old dragoons. We like religion; like the good old hymns—takes us back to the hick town we came from; and we believe religion is a fine thing to keep people in order—they think of higher things instead of all these strikes and big wages and the kind of hell-raising that's throwing the industrial system all out of kilter. And I like a fine upstanding preacher that can give a good show. . . . But we ain't pious. And any time you want to let down—and I reckon there must be times when a big cuss like you must get pretty sick of listening to the snivelling sisterhood!—you just come to us, and if you want to smoke or even throw in a little jolt of liquor, as
I've been known to do, why we'll understand.” Quoted from Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927), Chapter XXIII, Section 2, paragraph 12, p 302. Reason: "the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires," Chapter XXVII, last paragraph, p 364, with the goal “that workmen would turn from agitation to higher things, and work more loyally at the same wages” (Chapter XIII, Section III, p 195), says Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927).

"The whole art of Conservative politics . . . is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty [scam the middle class and poor] to use its political freedom to keep wealth [the rich and powerful] in power," says AneurinBevan,
cited in William Blum, KillingHope (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2004), Chapter 3, p 34. The RTL / morality scam is done by such hypocrites for the purpose of conning their targets.

And "regardless of what we [sane people] view as . . . arrogant folly and sub-intelligence. Forget about changing their minds. These Christians [sic] do not read the same books we do, they do not get their information from anything remotely resembling reasonably balanced sources [they] appear to be dangerously nuts [with their contradictory] Dominionism, Pretribulationism, Midtribulationism, and Posttribulationism, Premillennialism, Millennialism," says Joseph Bageant, "The Covert Kingdom: Thy Will be Done, On Earth as It is in Texas (25 May 2004).

William McKibben, "The Christian Paradox" (Harpers, August 2005): "Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. . . . America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. . . ."

Rosemary Agonito, "Hey Wait; Jesus Didn't Say That. Time to Call Out the Religious Right (Tuesday, 10 July 2012) ("The religious right defines family as the nuclear family, insular and complete in itself – the basis of social structure and the path to salvation. But Jesus radically redefines family as the community, stating again and again that we are all equal bothers and sisters. He goes so far as to repudiate his own nuclear family. When Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are looking for him as he speaks to a large crowd, he asks, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then he turns to the crowd and affirms, “Here are my mother and my bothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Throughout his ministry, he reiterates that he has come to redefine the family – that all of us are bothers and sisters, worthy of love. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” Indeed, when Jesus specifies who will “inherit the kingdom,” it comes down to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting those imprisoned – all members of the family. “Just as you did it to one of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Jesus goes so far on a number of occasions to state that unless one is willing to leave behind biological family ties, he cannot be part of the new order Jesus has come to establish.") (See also her book HYPOCRISY, INC.: How the Religious Right Fabricates Christian Values and Undermines Democracy.

Prof. Lawrence R. Velvel, J.D., "The American Moral Meltdown Accelerates" (5 May 2007)
Why do Religious Righters believe nonsense spouted by fools and misfits, rather than the real truth stated by experts? See the answer by Eastern Nazarene College evangelical professors Randall J. Stephens (History) and Karl W. Giberson (Physics), writing in The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), especially
Chapter 6, page 244, the undereducated seek "cultural cues" thus believe "someone just like us" rather than experts "with whom we have nothing in common." The undereducated in short, go by prejudice, eiesgesis, tergiversation, B.S. This is a continuation of the approach and atttitude of the Old South's white trash, analyzed thusly: “The readiness with which Southern [Religious Righters] prefer the most false and audacious claims . . . exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected,” says Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South: on The Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), p 36.
See also Greg Palast, “The Assassination of Hugo Chávez” (3 July 2006) (on Pat Robertson's pro-assassination goal); and
Dahlia Lithwick, "Justice's Holy Hires"
(The Washington Post, 8 April 2007) aka "How Pat Robertson's law school is changing America"
See also Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament, (Perseus Books, July 2006) by Randall Balmer, Prof., American Religious History, Barnard College. (See excerpt from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol 52, Issue 42, Page B6: "And what about abortion, the issue that the religious right decided in the early 1980s was its signature concern? Since January 2003, the Republican and religious-right coalition has controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress—yet, curiously, it has not tried to outlaw abortion. Why? Could it be that its members are less interested in actually reducing the incidence of abortion itself (in which case they should seek to alter public opinion on the matter) than in continuing to use abortion as a potent political weapon?")
See also

Amanda Marcotte, "It Wasn’t Abortion That Formed the Religious Right. It Was Support for Segregation" (Slate, 29 May 2014) ("The religious right, who liked to call themselves the 'moral majority' at the time, actually organized around fighting to protect Christian schools from being desegregated. It wasn't Roe v. Wade that woke the sleeping dragon of the evangelical vote. It was Green v. Kennedy, a 1970 decision stripping tax-exempt status from 'segregation academies'—private Christian [sic] schools that were set up in response to Brown v. Board of Education, where the practice of barring black students continued," as shown by Dartmouth Prof. Randall Balmer in Politico (27 May 2014.)

Austin Cline, "Christian Abortion Rate as High as National Average; Catholic Rate is Higher" (18 March 2006) ("Conservative Christians oppose legal abortion, but do they oppose abortion enough to refuse to have abortions themselves? Maybe not: according to a study by The Center for Reason, the abortion rate among Christians is just as high as the national average. Among Catholics, the abortion rate is even higher.")

Esther Kaplan, With God On Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House (New Press, 2005) (Conversation with Author; New Press Statement; Reviews: “The subtitle and numerous comments throughout the book assume that the 'Christian Right' is somehow connected to the Christian Faith. However I do not believe that it is correct to blame those of us in the Christian Community for the fact that there are unbelievers, total phonies, and outrageous hypocrites within the ranks. The 'Pseudo-Religious Right' would be more accurate terminology."—Robert O. DeVries, 20 June 2006)

The data at “The Authoritarians," by Robert Altemeyer (Univ of Manitoba, 2006) explains leadership traits among the amoral / Religious Right coalition as "very aggressive . . . hostile . . . almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence . . . dogmatic . . . hypocrites, from top to bottom . . . two-faced, and . . . one face never notices the other [and] give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong [and] the rank-and-file believe them?")

Chris Hedges, M.Th., "Radical Christian Right Preaches Liberal Evil" (Truthdig, 10 April 2007)
(cites "Timothy LaHaye, a Southern Baptist minister and the co-author, along with Jerry Jenkins, of the 'Left Behind' series . . . made into movies, as well as a graphic video game in which teenagers can blow away nonbelievers and the army of the Antichrist on the streets of New York City.")

This non-delivery "on their issues" can be understood by the fact that RTL's alleged issues, are a PLINO scam, not intended to be delivered on, but instead, to serve as a cover for RTL's policy to endorse anti-family, anti-union, anti-environment, pro-guns, pro-war, pro-tobacco candidates.
Note this pro-tobacco-death behavior pattern rampant in the PLINO professed 'pro-life' movement.
Note the disproportionate number of what our ancestors would call "Confederates" among them, people who typically cover up their real beliefs, and transmit their notions generation after generation.
Notice it among them. Bottom line: the pretended 'pro-life'!! movement is the tobacco-death lobby by another name. Never met a tobacco-lobby view or line-of-reasoning it doesn't support! A rose, or thorn, by any other name. . . .
Here in Michigan, July 2004, who were leaders against increasing cigarette tax? Many PLINO "right-to-life" politicians!!--intentionally losing an opportunity to help discourage smoking, holocaust, abortion. . . . RTL leadership refused to speak out.
Foreseeable result: Causing much of the very evils they allege, claim, profess, purport, to oppose!
Since the modern RTL movement came along in the 1970's, obstructing prevention, fighting the non-smoker movement, it has been aiding and abettingtobacco effects. Wherefore, abortions, drug abuse, AIDS, terrorism, etc. have come along, or vastly increased.
Matural and probable consequences of obstructing prevention, are in law, intended.
For more on their opposing prevention, see, e.g., "Why the Anti-Choice Movement Is on the Verge of Civil War," by Cristina Page (AlterNet, 31 July 2009).
Such people who talk for morals, while behind-the-scenes, obstructing them, follow the classic Southern mole approach, used in slavery, and carried on for generation after generation, of professing to be for morality, liberty, etc., while sabotaging them! For background on this, see Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), p 131.
False “Christians” have a record of turning others away from Christianity, currently, see Karen Horst Cobb, “No
Longer a Christian” [25 October 2004] and historically, in the slavery era.
See references by e.g., Pastor Brian D. McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus (W Pub Group, 2006), saying “that Christians should be more concerned about creating a just 'Kingdom of God' on earth than about getting into heaven” (reference “Evangelical Author Puts Progressive Spin On Traditional Faith,” by Caryle Murphy, Washington Post (Sunday, 10 September 2006, p A1)). This rejects “'The modern [alleged] Christian formula of 'I mentally assent to the fact that Jesus died for my sins and therefore I get to live forever in heaven' . . . is entirely cognitive,' said Ken Archer, 33, a D.C. software entrepreneur who is studying philosophy at Catholic University. 'It's a mathematical formula [that] leaves the rest of our being unfulfilled.'”
See also James Carroll, "The Many Forms of Fundamentalism" (Boston Globe, 19 March 2007).
Bill Scher,“Conservative SCHIP Plan Going Ka-Bluey” (4 September 2007) (“Remember when conservatives wanted to 'devolve' power away from Washington towards the states? . . . . But now that states are acting compassionately and broadening eligibility so all kids can actually be covered, conservatives no longer want to empower the states. They want to lecture and limit the states.”)
David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Evangelical Crackup” (28 October 2007) (“The pendulum in the Christian world has swung back to the moderate point of view. The real battle now is among evangelicals.”—Terry Fox, an ousted "Religious Right" type from Wichita, Kansas)

"Public health is the foundation on which reposes the happiness of the people and the power of a country. The care of the public health is the first duty of a statesman."—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881).